The energy ministers of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria agreed - during a four-way meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman - on a road map to supply Lebanon with energy and solve a chronic crisis that it has been suffering from for months.
The meeting was held to discuss a plan - backed by the United States - to ease the electricity crisis in Lebanon, which includes using Egyptian gas to generate electricity in Jordan, and then transferring it to Lebanon via Syria.
The meeting was attended by Jordan's Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Hala Zawati, Egypt's Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla, Syria's Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources Bassam Tohme, and Lebanon's Minister of Energy and Water Raymond Ghajar.
The Jordanian Minister of Energy said that the quartet meeting laid out a road map for studying the infrastructure of Egyptian gas, to be completed no later than 3 weeks.
The Lebanese Minister of Energy and Water stated that Lebanon's need of natural gas to generate electricity amounts to 600 million cubic meters annually, through a single plant in the country.
The Lebanese minister added that his country is currently working with the World Bank to secure the financial cover for its gas needs to produce electricity.
The Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources stressed the importance of the arrival of Egyptian gas to Lebanon, in order to help it in the crisis it is currently facing, and to return gas to it after a 10-year hiatus.
American green light
The quartet meeting comes after a visit by an official Lebanese delegation to Damascus last Saturday, the first since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution more than 10 years ago, after Washington gave Lebanon the green light to import electric power and gas from Egypt and Jordan through Syria;
Which means excluding him from the sanctions imposed on Damascus.
Washington's approval came shortly after Hezbollah announced that a "first ship" loaded with diesel would head from Iran to Lebanon, which raised political controversy and questions about what it would mean to bring it, if it was done, in terms of violating US sanctions imposed on Tehran.
The ship left Iranian ports about two weeks ago, and is expected to head to Syria to unload its cargo before transporting it overland to Lebanon.
Lebanon is suffering from a severe crisis in the electricity supply as a result of the lack of fuel needed for power generation, in addition to a sharp rise in the prices of derivatives as a result of the collapse of the lira, and the lack of foreign exchange needed for import.
It is noteworthy that the Arab Gas Pipeline project began inauguration in 2000, and the first amount of gas was exported in 2003, and it starts from the Egyptian city of El-Arish to the Jordanian city of Aqaba on the Red Sea, and extends to Syrian territory, and then to Tripoli, Lebanon.
The line stopped working in 2012, when it was exposed to several explosions carried out by unknown persons in Egypt, which began in 2011 and caused huge fires.